Not the purple dinosaur, nor yet Fred Flintstone's friend, nor Andy Griffith's deputy.
In a book published in 1988 there is this description of the iron mines in Mayari, Cuba.
The plateau was scaled by means of an inclined railroad (which) consisted of two standard-gauge tracks rising up on a roller-coaster gradient from elevation 130 feet to 1620 feet. Between the tracks ran a cable weighing 123,000 pounds. Metal-block barneys attached to the cable eased a loaded car down the grade.
(The cable was continuous, so that the empty cars were pulled up by the weight of the descending loaded cars.) I see references to coal being moved in something called a "barney yard" but nothing that makes it clear what a barney is --some sort of braking mechanism attached to the cable I guess.
Can anyone enlighten me?
